Humility

Posted April 1998

Back in ancient Rome, if the commander of a legion gained a great victory,
he would be allowed to enter the city in a triumphal parade. Wagons would
show the haul of loot obtained, prisoners would be dragged wailing in their
chains, and the General himself would ride in all his polished glory on
a great war-chariot.

But with the General rode a slave. The slave was assigned was to keep
the great victor humble. He'd remind the General that he was a human being,
not a god. He'd claim the General's lorica made his butt look big, claim
every good-looking woman who winked at the hero was actually a man, and
wrinkle his nose suspiciously every time the chariot passed a stockyard.
All during the great parade, the slave would remind the General that he
put his toga on one fold at a time, like any other man.

Two thousands years later, we don't have slaves. We have airplanes,
instead.

The day hadn't started well. I had to pull Moonraker's turtledeck off
to do some minor maintenance. Then I noticed my goggles were smeared, and
cleaned them with the same stuff I used on the windshield. At which point
I noticed a strong warning that it caused eye irritation. I decided to
slip the goggles up on my forehead if my eyes started to burn, but noticed
that the hold-down strap on my helmet was nearly torn off.

Delay, bother. By the time I took off, the mostly-cloudy afternoon had
lost the "mostly," and the wind seemed to be picking up. I decided to drop
by a nearby airport to borrow a Chaptermate's ANR headset to see how it'd
work in an open cockpit.

I fly into his home airfield relatively rarely. It's a classic Northwest
gash-in-the-trees runway.

Even worse, the wind was from the south. I traditionally have trouble
landing to the south at the that field. The runway itself is level, but
the surrounding terrain slopes down to the North. The landing end of the
runway is essentially atop a tree-covered bluff, which throws your height-perception
off. Back when I bought my 150 (after not flying for seven years) I darn
near crunched that poor Cessna several times, trying to land to the South.

All of that didn't occur to me as I entered the pattern for runway one-five.
I had some slight trepidation, but mind was still someone distracted by
the other problems of the day. And I'd been fly Fly Babies a long time.

Then on short final, I hit the sink.

The bottom dropped out. Airspeed evaporated like dry ice in the Sahara.
The stick hit the aft stop. In the last, fleeting microsecond, I realized
we were aimed for the very lip of the asphalt and wondered if it would
flip us.

WHAM!

We hit with a slam I haven't felt for years. Moonraker rebounded into
the air. Instinct finally woke up. The Continental roared. I kept us from
hitting again, establishing a climb.

My gaze shot left and right. Both wings in place, landing wires no slacker
than normal. No shouts on the radio about parts left behind. Doubts warred.
I had plenty of runway left. Should I pull the power, land, and check the
airplane over?

Just then I looked down into a face of a man who had been working on
his airplane. I could see the grin. There had been two airplanes waiting
to take off behind me.

Sad to say, that clinched the decision. I didn't want to be seen; I
wanted to climb under a rock somewhere and curse the Wright brothers. I
kept climbing and headed for home, just seven miles away.

In retrospect, I feel less guilty about my decision not to try salvage
the landing. I was *definitely* rattled. I could have brought the plane
around for another approach, but would have had to face the sink again.
Probably better I took ten minutes to settle down on the way back to a
familiar runway.

On the way, I kept wondering. The only shock absorption on the Fly Baby
landing gear is the tires...and Moonraker has small tires. Was either of
them flat? That'd mean a groundloop, maybe even a noseover.

A glance at the voltmeter brought another concern. Since my repairs
two months ago, it has been solid as a rock. But now it was twitching.
It wasn't going especially high or low, but it was jumping up and down.
I switched off the generator. The voltmeter *still* twitched, although
not as high.

What was happening? Did I have wires swinging back and forth, shorting
out? Had the battery been slammed through the bottom of its box, and now
was dangling at the ends of its wires.

The weather had continued to deteriorate. Raindrops splattered the windshield
as I entered on the 45. The wind had veered, and was now a strong crosswind.

I was still jittery. I ended up staying much too high on approach, and
ended up in a prolonged slip to get down on short final. We dropped towards
the asphalt. I overflared. The crosswind waggled the nose. I added a bit
of power, and managed to ease the wheels onto the runway.

My mind eased as the 'Baby rolled out normally. I rode the brakes and
turned off at the center taxiway. Down the row of hangars, turn the tail
towards my assigned spot, kill the switches.

And then for the first time, I remembered it. Moonraker's G Meter. I
looked.

It was pegged at the maximum reading: +4.0 Gs.

With a feeling of dread, I unfolded myself from the cockpit and walked
around the wing to examine the gear.

No damage. The axle *might* have a slight bend to it, but I couldn't
swear the bend hadn't been there before. No cracks in the wheels, no gouges
out of the tires, no stripped bolts, no broken welds, no snapped wires,
and the bottom longerons where the gear legs attach flowed with nary a
kink. The battery was still out of sight; it hadn't punched out the belly.
I noticed the rubber cuff around the gas-tank filler tube. The cuff was
about an eighth-inch above the level of the surrounding sheet metal. Either
the gas tank flattened slightly on impact, dragging the tube down, or the
metal skins flexed and shoved the cuff up.

Either way, that is one *strong* homebuilt.

I'd been feeling like hot stuff lately. Touch and goes had become routine
in an airplane that many find difficult to land smoothly. Maybe I've been
so full of myself that I haven't been listening; perhaps the airplane decided
that whispering in my ear wasn't enough. There's nothing like a nearly-bent
bird to point out both one's flaws and one's mortality.

Any landing you can learn from is a good landing. On that basis, maybe
I didn't do too bad. :-)